School Vacations Are Designed to Make Parents Value Education

I love my son. I love getting to stay home with him on some of his school breaks.

But I also love, love, looooooove the day school starts back. Oh my goodness gracious, yes. We have some SERIOUS cabin fever going on around here. 

Some of it is a product of circumstances: we live in an apartment, so he doesn't have an awful lot of space for the ridiculous amount of bounce-off-the-wall energy a 7-year-old boy apparently generates by breathing. (Child-sized hamster balls that generate electricity could be the clean energy source of the future if you just put a bunch of 7-year-old boys in them ... maybe with a few toy guns and tell them they have to ESCAPE FROM ENEMY STORM TROOPERS.)

Some of it is my own dang fault for treating previous vacations as "Let's Go Do Something Fun" (and expensive). I was too busy teaching my son that he needed to be entertained and not realizing the disaster that would subsequently unfold when said child is required to entertain himself. Without a screen. (That would be my aversion to using the TV or iPad as a babysitter  — curse my wayward eyes for reading every freaking news site and mommy blog that preaches the perils of too much screen time.) 

This vacation has taught me that limits are a good thing and, therefore, are going to become a lot more prevalent. It's taught me that lessons in quiet time are mandatory. And it's taught me to reeeeeaaally value the time he spends in school!